How to make the Fifi and the Flowertots Cake

Its taken me a while to write this up but I wanted to share with you the main steps of how I made the Fifi and the Flowertots cake. I think the main thing that you need to make this cake is patience, it took me about 3 days to finish and it turned out quite large. The cake was roughly 16 inches wide by 13 inches high.

What you are going to need:
To create the Fifi cake you will need the following:

5x 8inch sponge cakes

Buttercream

Icing / Fondant (In lots of colours)

Rolling pin & modelling tools

Straight Frill cutter

Extruder clay tool gun

Gum Paste

Wooden dowels

Chocolate for melting

Edible glue

Corn Flour (to roll out the icing)

Lots of Fifi reference material

Step 1: The Cake Stack
The cakes in this stack were 5x 8 inch round cakes. 3 of the cakes were made with an 8 ounce sponge mixture, and the other 2 a 6 ounce mixture. I trimmed the tops off the cakes to make them flat so they would all stack together well.

Step 2: Cutting the shape for the house
One of the hardest things about this cake was getting the dimensions right. I was aware that everything had to be in proportion to each other to make this cake look right.To make the main shape of the house I cut a small circle 5 1/2 inches round and placed this on the top of the stack. I then used this to carve the cake from top to bottom, creating the angled sides.

Step 3: create a visual guide
Once you have spent all that time carving your cake you are almost ready to add the buttercream. A tip of mine would be to create a visual guide, so you know where each piece of cake goes. In this case I used cocktail sticks. I placed these in a row at the front of the cake so when it came to putting it back together if these lined up I knew the shape was correct.

Step 4: Adding dowels
Because of the size and weight of this cake I treated it as if it was a 2 tiered cake. I added buttercream between the bottom 2 cakes and placed 4 dowels cut to size in the base. I then placed a cake board which had been cut to size and continued to stack the cake.This was then completely covered in buttercream and left to chill in the fridge whilst I rolled out the icing / fondant. (It was a tight squeeze, but by removing all the shelves I just about managed to get the cake to fit in the fridge)

NOTE: At this stage I also slid a horizontal dowel into the front of the 2nd to bottom cake. This was to act as a resting post for the dowel which would create the main structure for the watering can spout. (Sorry I don’t have a picture of this)

Step 5: Cover the cake in icing / fondant
This was a large cake to cover in 1 piece of icing and I had to admit I was nervous!!I coloured 2 packs of icing with yellow gel food colouring the day before as I didn’t want the icing to be too hot from all the kneading.I then rolled this out to the right diameter and placed this over the top of the cake. I used a smoothing tool down the sides to make a nice finish.

Step 6: Adding the detail
Once the cake was covered it was now time to add the detail. It was quite important that I had good refernce material for this cake. I created all the shapes I needed on paper and cut these out so that I could use them as templates.Around the door I created the trim by using an extruder clay gun for the beading and to make the frill I used a straight frill cutter by PME. To attach the flower box above the door I used cocktail sticks and edible glue. There was alot of edible glue used on this cake.

Step 7: Gumpaste handles & features
On this cake I was unable to make everything edible because some of the objects had to hold their shape. In these cases I used gumpaste / flowerpaste.The 2 handles, the fence around the top, the spout and the drainpipe were all made out of gumpaste. These were modelled to the correct size and left to dry for a day.To attach the handles was quite tricky, these were quite heavy and needed to support their own weight. I used some cocktail sticks and edible glue to attach these. I applied the edible glue and as I stuck them into place pushed a cocktail stick through the center. This could then be covered with a circle of gumpaste to make them invisible.

Step 8: Making the Spout
When I was first looking into how to make this cake I could find no information about how to attach a spout to a cake. This process became quite trial and error but I think I finally found the best way of doing it.Initially I was going to make the spout of of rice Krispie squares covered in icing, but once this was made I realised it would be way too heavy to support its own weight. This lead me to rethink the idea and realise that gumpaste, being light and hardening, would be the best option.The fact that I had first made the tube and top of the watering can spout out of Rise Krispie squares was key as I was able to cover these in cling film and use them as molds to place the gumpaste on to set.

NOTE: Place a hole though on the bottom of the spout head for the dowel to fit through. This will allow you to fix it to the cake later.

Once I had the 3 main parts of the spout, I used a small round icing tip to create the tiny circles in the top of the spout to look like water holes. I then cut out a ring of soft gumpaste. I used this to fix the top of the spout together with edible glue. This is then fixed to the main tube with another piece of soft gumpaste and glue.

Step 9: Attaching the spout
At the beginning of making this cake I had put a small horizontal dowel into the side of the cake. I was able to find this position and place another dowel which was cut to size. I then used melted chocolate to secure this into place. Once the chocolate was set and the dowel was quite sturdy. I placed the spout down the dowel fixing it into place with the hole in the top. I then glued around the base and wrapped another piece of gumpaste around the bottom to secure.

Step 10: Leave to dry
Once the cake spout is connected it is just a matter of adding all the finishing touches, and Fifi of course. Because of the amount of edible glue which was used in this cake and to allow the handles and spouts a chance to dry I left the cake over night with supports to make it ready to travel the next day.I really hope this ‘How To’ helped if you ever fancy making this Fifi and the Flowertots cake, or maybe just some of the techniques might come in handy.

You are fantastic, ive looked through your cakes and they are all definately works of art! And this tutorial is absolutely brilliant! I’m going to try and give the cake a go for my nieces birthday, how much icing did you use? I’m planning on buying White ready rolled icing and colouring it, is this how you did it? Also I was thinking of colouring the icing a few days before and leaving it in the fridge but I don’t want it to go hard, any tips? Thanks!

I’m so sorry for my late reply, I have just seen your message. Have you made the Fifi house yet? If you have I hope it has turned out well, if not I coloured 2 packs of 1kg fondant in yellow. I made a little extra because I wanted to make sure I had enough. It is fine to colour the icing a few days before, but my tip would be to wrap it in cling film and then place it in an air tight container. Putting it in the fridge will make it too cold and dry it out. I hope that helps. Good Luck
Lynz x

Thank you for your message. The cake was made using tins 20cm in diameter. The cake with the spout and handle was roughly 45cm wide and 33cm heigh with the handle added to the top. The fifi figure was about 10cm in height. I hope that helps.

I know it’s not yet on your tutorial page, but I wondered if you could tell me how you made your minnie mouse cake? I’d like to attempt to make it for my friend’s daughter for her 4th birthday in January, but I’m not sure how you’ve managed to get such a neat finish to the cake and such a perfect shape. Any help would be much appreciated.

Hi first of all thank you for sharing your echniques with us! I am going to try to make this cake (or at least a similar one) for my daughter’s 3rd birthday. My worry is about covering the cake in one piece of fondant! how wide should I roll the fondant to cover the whole cake because often I get wrinkles at the bottom sides!

hi there, l love your cakes and as l live in kent (swanley) l was wondering if you do tuition cake classes. l like the way you explain things in your tutorial. easy to understand as l am new to this,but l love doing it. thank you. sylvia.